Tuesday, September 30, 2008

This ad is on every single daytime tv commercial break, and I am confused by it EVERY TIME it airs. It's the "apply directly to the forehead" of late 08. The chimney dude looks vaguely International Male.

I can’t bend my pinkie for some reason. And my thigh feels like it was subject to some sort of Endorian-style attack with a log or rocks. But it’s that satisfying good kind of pain, the sort that’s the result of playing full contact football or being hit with rocks.

My back, however, is a different story. The entire area south my shoulder blades and north of my waist has been incredibly tight and achy for the last week. Lying down, stretching, yoga and massage all do nothing. You’d think I’d been carrying a 10lbs sack of potatoes around every night for the last two weeks. A SACK OF POTATOES THAT WON’T SHUT UP AND GO TO SLEEP LIKE A GOOD SACK OF POTATOES!!

And speaking of potatoes, imagine you had one that grew a little an eye on it. Not a real eyeball like an 80’s horror movie but one of those potato eyes that sprout when they hang out on the shelf too long. Now say you took care of that potato and made sure it was clean and warm and didn’t fall into buckets left in the back yard since potatoes can drown in less than one inch of water.

But then, two weeks after you brought the potato home from the store, the eye fell off in a perfectly normal and expected fashion. All the books on potato care say you can just throw the eye away or flush it down the toilet.

My question is: can I feed the eye to the dog? Just throwing it away seems unceremonious. And it’s no worse than the other junk he eats during his dog life – like some sort of potato jerky – and its not like his breath could get any worse. I feel like the potato and the dog would have a life long bond.

My only concern is that the dog develops a taste for potato. That wouldn’t be good.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

There is a family we CANNOT figure out that camps with us in the hospital day room. A grandfather figure who is youngish- he wears a lot of madras and boat shoes and is reading "Last of the Mohicans." The grandmother-person is exceedingly rich-person thin, has a haircut that probably cost more than my annual salary (or as much as a week's worth of NICU bills.... zing! Take note, internet, on how I have retained my impeccable sense of humor, even after the miracle of childbirth and week's worth of total health panic re: my new pet), and wears a lot of white.

The mom-person is younger than us, is of a indeterminable/impossible relation to either grandparent, is ususally staring blankly at a wall while the elderpeople hold her kid. I've seen her in sweatpants and "Family Guy" teeshirts. She has made three comments in two days, one of which is about the weather in the mountains in winter. ("windy I bet.)

The dad appears to be 15, and has worn the same Army recruitment teeshirt all week. He was very excited yesterday about buying a tuna fish sandwich.

The socio-economic differences are pretty apparent, sure, but I am mostly just confused about how these people even know each other, let alone are related. Can I ask? Is that weird?

Other questions:

- will the dog ever stop being a total moron?

- if i take out a Verizon store with my car, can I blame it on hormones instead of the simple facct that the phone I own is the biggest piece of shit I have ever held in my life, and that includes PIECES OF ACTUAL SHIT i now have on my hands on a daily basis? Motorola, you make me so furious.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I’ve never seen that program called the Leguna Beach. Or the show with the girl with the fake rack who dates the albino dude (who unfortunately looks a little like me sometimes) with the scraggly beard made out of corn silk. However, when they do appear in the society pages, I’ve noticed that at least they look relatively well-dressed. Not fashion-forward or anything, but they don’t shop at the Dress Barn and the male-equivalent of the Dress Barn. (Syms?)

The same cannot be said for the two ridiculously dressed girls I just saw get out of an SUV at 21st and M. If beclowned is a word, then it’s the one that best applies here. Their wardrobes would not have caused a second glance, however, until I noticed the third woman trailing behind with wireless microphones and a walkie-talkie.

It appears that Lifetime has started shooting their LNS-themed, unintentional parody of faux celebrity realism here in the most northwestern parts of north-west DC. My first instinct says it’ll never even make on the air. But if I’m wrong and in 8 months the network decides to air it, they will soon regret any amount of money they have clearly wasted. Lifetime would be better off leaving the restaurant right now and filming any garbage blowing down M Street. It already looks to be of better quality.

Monday, September 08, 2008

We asked Target to send us 60lbs of wood and an Allen wrench in July. In return they took our money and spent the next 3 months dicking around not mailing it. But the internets say it’ll be sitting on our front porch when we get home for either the dog to mangle or the neighbors to steal. The G’s been tracking the order every 15 minutes, which so far has only led to an irate 36 hour period where she stomped around the house demanding to know why the package was sent Ontario, Canada after already spending a day in California. (Hint: there’s an Ontario, California.)

She’s also convinced that it was her series of nasty letters that goosed Target into finally getting off its lazy Mossimoed ass and putting this pile of lumber into the mail. She is wrong. Unlike my crazy rants about frivolous things to faceless companies that go unanswered, she expects satisfaction. I understand that any communication will expediently get the disgruntled customers nowhere.

The real problem, and I am convinced this is true, was that our delivery originated in a certain Asian nation that held the Super Bowl-sized sporting event known as the Olympics. Between July and the closing ceremonies we received only two halfhearted emails from Target – one thanking us for the order and one that effectively said they had no idea when it would be shipped but thanks for the check and, uh we’re also canceling your free shipping so you owe us an additional $49.99. But as soon as Jimmy Page stumbled off that bus and the torch was sent to its shame in London –WANG! – emails aplenty. “Sorry about that $49.99 thing. Also, do you like merino?”

I don’t know if ours was a factory that was shut down to allow those baby athletes stop complaining but if I was Target, that’s the excuse I would have given. It would have been a much better customer service ploy than the electronic shrug of the shoulders or months of silence they ended up feeding us.

Andy Murray has the least exotic sounding name of anyone playing in a grand slam final since Art Larsen beat Herb Flam in 1950. Sorry Andy, but you have a dog’s name and I will not root for you tonight. Good luck at being the latest addition in the long line of Scottish sports failures.

On sports previously…

The parabolic microphones weren’t picking up what he was saying but watching this, all I heard was this. (The crying part, not the ferret part)

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Of late, I’ve had a two 2 gig flash drives “walk off” and one 1 gig stop working. The latter was being recognized by fewer computers so I’d recently taken most of the valuable info (a list of Scrablulous bingoes) off. But the first two had some important quality stuff (a work-in-progress lite erotica novel about a group of time-traveling teenage wolfmen/women who solve crimes in a parallel dimension where Howie Mandell was never born) on them and I was not happy with their casual disappearance. Something had to be done. Something that would insure there’s no confusion over the drive’s owner and any future vanishing would quickly escalate from a misdemeanor concerning property to a tragic felony of the heart.

This entire issue would have been solved with one of those chains banks use to chain pens to desks. But they don’t sell these at CVS or Walgreens. And for some reason I couldn’t manage to steal one from my bank. Fortunately though, Walgreens has just started stocking WWE action figures. It seemed the next best thing.

So with a pair of pliers and snips, a metal file, a little bit of glue and electrical tape and some Alaskan ingenuity, I am the proud owner of a brand new The Miz flashdrive.

A few things to note:

There was a brief time in the last five years when I was irrationally obsessed with one of the Real World/Road Rules Challenges. I am refusing to look up an actual tick-tock of what has happened between then in now, so I can only assume that the guy who called himself The Miz on that show has somehow managed to become a pro wrestler.

His gimmick seems to be having Cameron Diaz’s hair from Something About Mary and Tim Kaine’s eyebrows from every day ever.

If you exclude the giant pecs but include the absurd delts, he looks like my brother-in-law.

An added bonus is that the plastic torso is of such a cheap quality, the original orange light from the flash drive can be seen glowing in his chest like E.T. Even better, when the drive is thinking about stuff, it pulsates slowly like a heartburn sufferer in a Pepcid AC commercial.

I’ve already been entranced several times today by its hypnotic throbbing glow.

Finally, at 2 gigs, my calculations show that my The Miz half-toy has a greater memory capacity than The Miz himself.

So, what a hot mess all that was, eh? I kept expecting her to roll out her tater tot hot dish recipe. And then the fam looked so uncomfortable on stage with scary Grandpa John. Poor Levi. You know one wrong move, and he was a goner- a giant hooked cane operated by a low-level McC staffer would have vaudeville'd his ass right off. (Also, was he chewing gum??????)

K: i feel like this is a plot to a bad fish-out-of-water sandra bullock movie, the kind that i would be embarrassed to admit that i watched, but secretly enjoy.

Maybe it's just too... familiar. This entire disaster is comparable to the highest functioning member of my family deciding to run for office. And if you'd ever like to reach my uncle and encourage him to do so, his email address is wo/lfho/llowbow/hunter@[redacted]. Not kidding. Yes, bow hunting. Us'ns not rich enough to git a plane.

I have totally forgotten how to write on a blog, if it isn't apparent.

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

At a party, the D’s boy friend let it be known that our local Borders has gone overboard with its Watchmen hype preparations. There are at 30 copies for sale in the basement (banished) comics section, 20 on a separate shelf and a few more upstairs filled under top sellers.

I don’t find this that interesting. Everyone’s got to make their duckets and even if Moore won’t see the movie, he can still reap some rewards from its release. What I do find interesting is that I noted the very same thing and took a picture of it earlier that day.

But I was going to pull him aside and show it off in private. There were girls at this party.